12.10.2012

A Decade After the Dynasty

In any great dynasty there are familiar points of reference --
certain names or incidents or images that mark the reign of each ruler
long after the dynasty has passed into history. So it is with the long
line of UCLA basketball kings. There was Lew-CLA and the Walton
Gang and the Wizard of Westwood. Alcindor's sky hook and Shackleford's
corner jumper and the full-court zone press. Hazzard and Goodrich. Wicks
and Rowe. There were the title-game performances -- BillWalton's
44 points on 21-of-22 shooting against Memphis State and Gail
Goodrich's 42 against Michigan. And always, there on the sidelines with a
rolled-up program and the look of an English lit professor, was Coach
John Wooden.

But it has been a decade since the dynasty --
10 years since the Bruins last won an NCAA championship. Though the
reference points may remain clear in the memory, time can blur the
details, and to fully appreciate the magnitude of UCLA's achievement,
you need the details. If you're impressed by Georgetown's drive for a
second consecutive title, consider:

* UCLA won 10 of 12 NCAA
titles under Wooden from 1964 through '75, including seven in a row
from 1967 through '73. The only years the Bruins were stopped were 1966,
when they missed the tournament with an 18-8 record and Texas Western
(now Texas-El Paso) won the title, and 1974, when they lost in the
semifinals to eventual champion North Carolina State in double overtime.

* The Bruins compiled the longest winning streak in college
basketball history -- 88 games -- from January 1971 to January 1974.

* No team has won consecutive titles since UCLA won its seventh
in a row in 1973, and only four teams other than the Bruins have won as
many as two in a row.

"As the years go by, you tend to
forget all the records and the exact numbers, even here where there are
reminders of those days all over the place," said Sidney Wicks, a
volunteer assistant coach at UCLA and a starting forward on the '70 and
'71 teams. "But every now and again someone will mention them to you,
and it hits you all over again. I think to myself, 'I was a part of
that.' Then I walk around the rest of the day with a smile on my face
and my chest stuck out."

For others, such as Steve Patterson -- the UCLA center who bridged the two-year gap between the Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and BillWalton eras -- the memories remain vivid.

"I graduated, played in the pros, gave up playing basketball, went
on to other things, and then came back to the game, but never, never did
I forget about what we did at UCLA.
It's always right there in your mind," said Patterson, an assistant
coach at Arizona State. "How can you forget when you're part of a
once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment? It's the kind of string you're never
going to see again.

"Unless, of course," he added, "they figure out a way to clone John Wooden."

THE COMMON GROUND

It always comes back to Wooden. His former players have gone on to
widely disparate careers -- law, clergy, acting, coaching -- but Wooden
is their common ground.

"It wasn't like everyone loved
and worshiped Coach Wooden," said Lynn Shackleford, a starter at forward
from 1967 through '69. "But somehow, all these years later, I find
myself repeating to other people the things he said to me or thinking to
myself, 'What would Coach Wooden have said or done in this situation?'
When people ask me how UCLA managed to win all the time, sometimes I
just say 'Wooden.' He's the best answer."

John Wooden is 74
now. He lives in the San Fernando Valley, where he practices "the fine
art of relaxation" and amuses himself with "an occasional call from
someone who wants to consult me on some matter of earth-shaking
importance, like who's going to be in the Final Four."

Wooden won't call himself the best reason for UCLA's unmatched success,
but he will suggest that he is the one from which all other reasons
flow. Most of the memorable sports dynasties -- the New York Yankees,
Boston Celtics, Montreal Canadiens -- ruled over a professional sport
and had many of their best players for their entire careers; Wooden
never had a player for more than three years. The only thing the 10
championship teams had in common was their coach, and Wooden doesn't
hesitate to remind you of that fact.

"I'm proud of the fact
that I won championships with different types of teams. We won three
with Jabbar and two with Bill Walton, but those were only five of the
10," Wooden said. "We won in 1964 without a starter taller than 6-5. We
won in 1970 and 1971 without a dominating center (Patterson) and we won
in 1975 with a pair of guards (Andre McCarter and Pete Trgovich) a lot
of people thought would be our downfall. If I'm to be remembered as a
great coach, I think it should be because I won with so many different
types of teams.

"The only time I really think about the
championship years are those times when someone asks me why we managed
to win all the time, as though there is some mysterious secret that only
I know. Sometimes people take that 'Wizard of Westwood' malarkey a bit
too seriously."

Some of the reasons for UCLA's success were far from mysterious. They were named Alcindor, Walton, Wilkes, Hazzard, Goodrich, Wicks, Rowe, Allen, Bibby and Johnson. The Bruins had at least one consensus All-American in each of their championship years except 1970.

But UCLA
didn't win simply by grabbing all the top talent. Bruin championship
teams include starters such as Kenny Heitz, Freddie Goss, Mike Lynn,
Kenny Booker and Trgovich -- good players, but far from great.

"We always had excellent talent, but we didn't always have the best
talent," said Goodrich. "I don't think Coach Wooden really wanted a team
full of great players, anyway. Too many stars, and you find yourself
losing control. Coach Wooden himself will tell you that control was one
thing he had to have."

PLAYERS REBEL

Wooden acknowledges that some of the players rebelled at the tight reins.

"I was brought up believing in discipline, in control, and I
demanded those things when I coached," Wooden said. "Some of my players
didn't care for that approach, but I didn't expect them to. They were
young, and the young naturally rebel against discipline. They didn't
have to like it, but they did have to accept it, or at least adapt to
it, if they wanted to play for me."

Even with Wooden's stern
hand, the Bruins weren't always angels. Forward Mike Lynn was suspended
from the team in 1967 when he was convicted of using a stolen credit
card. Guard Lucius Allen was arrested for possession of marijuana on May
27, 1967 and again on the same date a year later. Walton, a
self-described radical, was arrested in 1973 when he stretched himself
across the middle of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles as part of a
demonstration against the Vietnam war. He was eventually placed on two
years conditional probation by the university.

"There was a
lot of turmoil at UCLA, and I guess I was involved in a lot of it," said
Walton, now a center for the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA. "Coach
Wooden and I didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues, but I don't think
either one of us ever lost respect for the other. He respected me as a
player and as an intelligent human being who could think for myself,
which is more than you can say for a lot of coaches."

Said
Wooden: "I didn't treat all the players alike. I sought to give them the
treatment they earned, deserved or responded to. I can't say I liked
them all equally. There were some I wouldn't let date my daughter, for
example. Nor did all the players like each other. There is no way to
have harmony all the time. Yet all that can and should be forgotten on
the floor. You can still have an excellent team from players who don't
particularly care for each other, or for the coach."

As their domination of college basketball grew, so did the pressure the Bruins had to withstand.

"The expectations were so high that we could seldom satisfy
people," Shackleford said. "Maybe that's one reason why we were never
close and didn't really stay in touch. Everybody was just relieved that
it was all over. People ask me if anything like UCLA will ever happen
again. I tell them that maybe it would be best if it didn't."

DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES

If any school is to duplicate UCLA's domination of college
basketball, it will do so under significantly different circumstances.

"I don't think you'll ever see another UCLA," said CBS analyst
Billy Packer. "There are more schools with legitimate programs than
there ever have been before."

As the number of programs
have grown, so has the NCAA tournament. There were 24 teams in the
tournament in 1964, the year UCLA won its first title, and 32 teams in
1975, when the Bruins won their last. This year there are 64. UCLA had
to win only four tournament games to win the championship until 1975,
when it had to win five. This year's champion will win six.

Still, Wooden believes a repeat of UCLA's success is possible. "It
happened once, it can happen again," he said. "Although I'm not
predicting Georgetown will become a dynasty, it has the ingredients: An
established winning tradition, a coach who has a well-recognized system
so that players know what they're getting into before they come, a
knack for recruiting big men and a reputation that will attract not only
the best players from their area, but the best players across the
country. That probably means Georgetown will almost always be in the
running for the title, and when you're in the running, there's always
the chance that you will win your share, or more than your share."

SCHOLARSHIP LIMITS

No team will be able to build the stockpiles of talent that the
Bruins regularly compiled before several rule changes were instituted in
the early '70s. Until 1971, when the NCAA limited the number of
scholarship players per school to 15, there was no limit on the number
of scholarships a school could offer.

The first seven of
UCLA's title teams also benefitted from the old rule that kept freshman
from playing on the varsity, a restriction that was lifted in 1972. In
1966 UCLA had a freshman team, which included Abdul-Jabbar, Allen,
Shackleford and Kenny Heitz, that defeated the varsity, 75-60.

"Today, at least some of those freshman would have gone to a school
where they had a chance of playing varsity immediately, or they would
have gone to UCLA and forced some upperclassman to the bench, who might
have gotten unhappy and transferred," Packer said.

Players turning professional before their college eligibility expires is
another factor. Because the NBA rule went into effect in 1972,
Abdul-Jabbar never had an opportunity to turn pro early, and Walton turned down his chance.

"Keeping your players is becoming as much of an art as recruiting them," Wooden said.

Those factors seem to indicate college basketball will never see another dynasty of UCLA-like proportions, which Packer believes would be for the best.

"It's no coincidence that college basketball has been more popular
than ever the last 10 years, when there has been no one dominant team,"
he said. "UCLA's
dynasty is something to be admired and something for every program to
aspire to, but it's better for the game when everyone can really feel
they have a legitimate chance at the title."

Wooden agrees.
"It's nice to be able to look back on the time when UCLA was the king,"
he said. "But I think it's healthy to change rulers once in a while."